The Rabat Genizah Project

The other project I am volunteering for is at the Jewish Museum in Casablanca. It is the only Jewish Museum in the Arab world, and is mostly unknown to the Casablanca population. Even people several blocks away from it often don't know where it is. In their defense, the museum is hidden in a wealthy suburban neighborhood with winding homogenous streets. The gate blends in with other surrounding houses save the few guards that sit outside.

The Rabat Genizah Project was established by Oren Kosansky, an anthropology professor at Lewis & Clark school. Genizah is the jewish custom of treating all sacred texts as human bodies meriting graves or mausoleums instead of the garbage can. Oren collected jewish books and documents fated to the genizah in Rabat in order to create a project that will result in a digital archive of old unpublished and published Jewish documents. These documents are written in French, Hebrew, and all the endangered language of Moroccan Judeo-Arabic, which is essentially Arabic written in the Hebrew script.

Though my job is mostly scanning and compiling inventory lists, it is satisfying to know how many research projects can be initiating because of this collection! I, myself, am tempted to base future research projects off of it. The only problem is my lack of Hebrew knowledge.